i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ 



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J'''J 



DR. STORES' DISCOURSE 



BEFORE THE 



SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION 



CollFgiotE anb CljBologiral dbiiratioii 



AT THE WEST. 



^l^^^-^^^r^-— —— ——-——-— —----^^ 



^ 



COLLEGES, A POWER IF I V I L I Z AT I O H, 

TO BE USED FOB OHEIST. 



DISCOURSE 



BEFOEE THE 



SOCIETY FOR TflE PROMOTION OF COLLEGIATE AND THEOLOGICAL 
EDUCATION AT THE WEST, 



PROVIDENCE, R. I., OCTOBER 30, 1855. 



RICHARD S. STORRS, Jr., D.B., 

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OP THE PILGRIMS, BROOKLYN, N. T. 



REPRINTED FROM THB 

American Journal of Education and College ReTiew, for June, I8§6. 



NEW YORK: 

F. A. CALKINS, 348 BROADWAY, 

1856, 




.58 



DISCOURSE. 



COLLEGES, A POWER IN CIVILIZATION, TO BE USED FOR CHRIST * 

BY RICHARD S. STORKS, JR., D.D., 

Pastor ot the Church of the Pilgrims, Broolclyii, N. T. 



" Thy neck is like the tower of David, builded for an armory, whereon there 
hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." — Song of Solojiion, iv. 4. 

However men may differ concerning the propriety of interpreting 
the " Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," as prophetically de- 
scriptive of the mutual love between Christ and his Church, no 
one, with a heart in any degree alive to the charm of pastoral poetry, 
will hesitate to admit the exquisite beauty of its description of the 
Bride. ' Behold, thou art fair, my love ; behold, thou art fair. 
Thou hast doves' eyes,' modest and loving, ' within thy locks. 
Thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead,' 
roughening its slopes with their yellow wave. ' Thy teeth are like 
a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from the wash- 
ing,' pure and white, each meeting its fellow, and none of them 
wanting ; for ' every one thereof beareth twins, and none is barren 
among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,' soft; and 
smooth, round and red ; ' and thy speech is comely. Thy temples 
are like a piece of a pomegranate,' with the red and the white 
blended upon it, ' within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of 
David,' so straight and high, and firmly set, wheron there hang 

* This article was prepared as a Discourse to be delivered on behalf of the " Society for 
tie promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West." It was delivered at the 
last anniversary of that Society, in Providence, E. I., and was afterward repeated, by special 
request, in Boston, New Haven, New York, and Philadelphia. For obvious reasons, the orig« 
inal form of it is retained in our pages. — Ed. 
VOL. I. NO. VI. — 35 



2 DESCRIPTION OF THE CHURCH. 

necklaces of gold and pearls, as on that tower there hang the buck- 
lers that have been used or won by mighty men. ' Thy two breasts, 
are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. 
Until the day break' — or, rather, until it breathe, with the first pulsa- 
tion of morning light — ' and the shadows flee away, I will get me 
to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense. Thou art 
all fair, my love ; there is no spot in thee !' 

No one, certainly, will question the beauty of this passage from 
the sacred Idyl. It greets us with the freshness of morning-land 
upon it. Spice-winds and balm imbue the words. The tremulous 
shafts of the Eastern dawn are hardly more clear and pure from 
taint, than are these lines from the touch of artificial or meretricious 
ornament. Through them, rather, we meet the shepherd-soul, still 
fresh and strong in the midst of all the shows of station, imbued 
essentially with the love of nature and the sense of its charms, 
walking forth in symmetric and undebased beauty, to utter its 
thought in happy song. No passage of the earlier poetry of any 
land breathes a sweeter aroma of nature throughout it ; and none 
more def ly, with an intuitive grace that outruns art and mocks imi- 
tation, selects the most picturesque forms and types to set forth its 
object. The Poet must always accept it as a triumph, not of prac- 
tice but of genius, not of artifice but of nature, in his domain ; while 
the Christian believer, finding in it the devout ascription to the Lord 
of love for his Church, which he was wont to meet for communion 
on the summits of Jerusalem, the very " mountain of myrrh and the 
hill of frankincense," will recognize the spiritual meaning which 
consecrates it, and will admire the wisdom which has preserved it 
for us. The Church walks here an Eastern maiden, pure as the 
morning, serene as evening, beloved with more than lover's tender- 
ness by him who is her Lord, with no spot on her, all fair and no- 
ble. And it belongs to us, to all who honor and love the Church, to 
make her now what he foresaw her, who wrote of her before Christ 
came. The harlot of the Apocalypse, beside this maidenly bride 
and queen of the earlier vision, has a dreadful and lurid signifi- 
cance in its symbol, which History, alas, but too faithfully interprets. 

But it is not so much my purpose to dwell upon this description — 
which, indeed, neither asks nor would suffer much commentary of 
mine — as to take the one object which the text brings before us, and 
to consider it in its meaning, as representative of that which now 
exists. " Thy neck is like the Tower of David, builded for an 
Armory, wheron there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of 
mighty men." 

The king's house, and the Temple itself, were not more a part of 



GOD S USE OF INSTEtJMEHTS. 3 

the completeness of Jerusalem than was this citadel and armory of 
David. Erect and solid, it rose so prominently before the eye of one 
who viewed the sacred city, from the mountains round about it, or 
from its walls and the roofs within them, that it mingled itself in the 
thoughts of the poet with all things most familiar to him. It was as 
inseparably a part of the scene from which his graphic imagery was 
caught, as familiar to his mind, as familiar to those for whom imme- 
diately the poem was recited, as the flocks on Mount Gilead, or the 
threads of scarlet, the sheep coming up from their washing in 
the river, or the pomegranate, showing its crimson flowers and 
pulpy fruit through the embowering dark-green foliage. 

The mention, therefore, of this lofty and durable citadel, although 
so incidental — the more, I might say, because it is incidental — > 
suggests to us this thought, as the solitary shrub suggests its spe- 
cies : that God, in advancing His hingdom on earth, has never dis" 
pensed with the use of fit Powers. He has originated, rather, and or- 
ganized such powers ; has availed himself of them, and made them 
subordinate to His designs ; so that, from the first, his people have 
been familiar with them, have been accustomed to the use of them, 
and, while trusting first of all in his Providence and Spirit, have been 
careful to erect, to confirm and maintain, these appropriate instruments ; 
to rebuild them when decayed ; to keep them strong, and equipped 
with resources ; and to icse them, whenever occasion has demanded, 
to advance His dominion. They have rested beneath the shadow of 
God's wing ; but that shadow has fallen more evidently upon them 
as they have surveyed His appointed Instruments. They have seen 
that He, with an efficiency unfailing, and never wearied, an efficiency 
that inspired and carried them forward on its immense movement, 
was advancing His kingdom to supremacy on earth. And yet they 
have seen that He created and then employed fit powers for this, and 
called on them to use these too : the powers of Government, of Lit- 
erature, of Society ; sometimes the power of armies, and of war ; 
even as He builded, by his direction, the citadel of David, and the 
armory of his people, in the very city which He had chosen lor his 
rest ; where the ark was, and the covenants, the Temple and its 
splendors, the priesthood and its service, the worshiping congrega- 
tion, and the glory of the Shekinah. 

God always has had such visible and established centres of power 
in the advancement of His kingdom. He has had the eternal might 
in his hand, and yet he has used men, and employed their energies 
and their institutions, in gradually realizing his grand ideal, of Human 
society harmonious with the Heavenly. And the mightier and more 
firm these establishments have been, the more fitting to His purpose, 



* OOLT.EGES FIT INSTRUMENTS FOR GOD. 

SO long as they have not arisen against him ; and the more fully and 
earnestly has he employed them. He has not left them to be small 
powers ; but has developed, enlarged, and built them up, until they 
became, each in its place, " as the tower of David, builded for an 
Armory." This is the truth suggested by the allusion in that stanza 
of the song which I have taken for the text ; and this I assume as the 
basis of my discourse. A glance over History will verify it at once. 
Our knowledge of God's character, of his wisdom and goodness 
- — every view of his plan, which shows us how he operates through 
causes for effects, and appropriates means and applies auxiliaries, 
instead of directly creating the result, would almost lead us to an- 
ticipate it, I think, in the absence of History. The Scriptures de- 
clare it 5 that ' the shields of the earth belong unto the Lord ;' that 
the very ' wrath of man shall be made to praise him,' that all things 
shall work, work actively and together, for good to his children ; that 
kings shall be the nursing-fathers of his Church, in order to her ultimate 
triumph among men, and queens her nursmg-mothers ; the sons of 
strangers building her walls, and their kings ministering unto her, and 
the nation and kingdom that will not serve her being utterly wasted. 

Holding in mind, then, this general truth, it is only necessary that 
I should show — what will not be difficult—- that Colleges, and other 
higher Seminaries of learning, are real and effective powers in civ- 
ilization, and that they are fit powers to be used in the extension of 
God's kingdom on earth, to conciliate for the society which has it 
for its object to found and upbuild these, the sympathy of Christian 
men, and their large assistance. I would take them out of their 
merely human relations, and show them connected with the vast plan 
of God ; capable of being, and adapted to be, his magnificent in- 
struments, the radiating points of his far-reaching and mighty ope- 
ration amid our times ; the citadels and the armories of his peaceful 
hosts ! 

A College is simply, in its elementary form, which yet includes 
the whole idea of it, a Seat of Learning ; where minds more dis- 
ciplined, and more largely cultivated, meet other minds less mature 
and enriched, to quicken and instruct them. It is not a collection 
of funds or of buildings ; that may be, or may not be, in connection 
with the other, according to circumstances. The most effective 
Colleges have sometimes been those which had fewest of these ; and 
those whose fame still shines as a star on the front of Grecian His- 
tory had almost none. It is not even a collection of books, of spec- 
imens in science, of works of art ; these are the implements and 
the equipment of the College, which will naturally come to it more 
and more copiously as it stands more permanently, and fulfills its 



NATUEE OF A COLLEGE. 5 

office with larger success ; but they do not describe, or even neces« 
sarily designate it. The presence of them is not essential to its life ; 
the absence of them interferes with its usefulness, but does not forbid 
or impair its integrity. But the College is, in its radical idea, in its 
essential life and form, a collection of Persons, the teachers and the 
taught ; some older and manlier, with minds more disciplined, and 
thoughts more exercised, and more conversant with truth ; the many 
younger and more immature, with minds receptive, but not yet de- 
veloped, acquisitive of truth, but not familiarized with its princi» 
pies and relations. The younger come to be taught by the older. 
The older came to impart of their knowledge, their experience and 
taste, and something even of their own mental force, to the younger, 
their disciples, 

. This is a College in its primary form ; not a Manufactory, though 
it may have buildings and bells like that ; not a Museum, though it 
may have collections and libraries like that ; but, radically, an assem- 
blage of living, thinking, and communicating minds ; some teaching 
the rest, the many learning from the few more advanced. In our 
times, however, it is obvious to add that the common use of lan- 
guage applies the term College, and for the purposes of this dis- 
course it will also be applied, to those higher seats of learning to 
which the more frequent and familiar schools stand as auxiliaries, 
and in which older minds attract and instruct an older class of pu- 
pils. It is these, as separated from other Seminaries of useful 
knowledge, and considered apart from them, which we are to esti- 
mate, and the relations of which to Christian civilization I am briefly 
to set forth ; because it is with these, chiefly at least, that the West- 
ern College Society is directly concerned. 

I. Such a College, then, necessarily, by its very constitution, and 
in the beginning of its history, is a centre of power ; of that 
moral power, pervading, supplementing, and controlling all others, 
which more and more is becoming supreme in our age. This is 
the first fact to be considered in regard to it. 

There is power exerted wherever a thought is clearly uttered 
by one mind to another, and is received by the latter, and made a 
principle in it. For thought, thus circulating and thus apprehended, 
becomes, in every mind which it visits and affects, the seed of other 
thoughts ; the germ, oftentimes, maturing into systems of conviction 
and of experience. It hath that vital energy in it, and that repro- 
ductive tendency, if so be it be a true thought, which will not let it 
slumber ; and the mind hath that quick aptitude for it, which will not 
let it pass inactive from the memory. When once it is lodged 
among the convictions, other thoughts gather to it, and are modified 



6 THE GOVERNING POWER OF THOUGHT. 

by it according to its importance. It inspires them with its force, 
or arranges them by its law. Hopes, desires, plans of action, the 
very temper and spirit, take impulse and tone in some degree from 
it ; the character itself, in all its development, receives its impression. 
It passes by degrees, in its influence and control, not always swiftly 
but always certainly, from the mind to the life ; from the inward state 
and frame of the soul, to its expression in the conduct. It prompts 
or restrains the efforts of men ; directs their endeavor to new and 
higher ends, or stimulates that endeavor for those previously chosen. 
It even passes forth from them to others ; sometimes to repeat, in the 
belief, the character, and the life of others, the same operation it 
has shown in the first examples of its power. And though, of 
course, the influence of the first thought thus uttered, thus appro- 
priated, and thus communicated to others, becomes very soon indis- 
tinguishable to men, not to be followed by their vision or intuition, 
nor even to be detected by their analysis, it is just as certain as any 
effect which we witness before us — as certain as the ripening of fruit 
in our gardens, from seeds that were planted long ago — that that influ- 
ence extends itself through the widening circles of human life, is 
imparted from one generation to its successors, and becomes thus in- 
separably though invisibly incorporated with all the development 
of the history of the race ! It is invisible ; but sometimes the safer 
from assault or resistance for that very reason. It is imponderable ; 
but so is every great power in nature : light, gravitation, electricity, 
life. It passes without observation and show ; but in this it allies it- 
self with every real moral movement, with the coming of the king- 
dom of Christ himself. It is silent in operation ; but so is the force 
that permeates the soil, that pictures it with flowei's and shelters it 
with trees, and makes each spring a resurrection of nature. And he 
who philosophically observes human history, considering its devel- 
ment and tracing it to its sources, will see that Thoughts have really 
governed it more than Arms, even in the past ; that it hath stood, like 
the earth which is its platform, not on visible pillars of adamant and 
gold, but on " words of power ;" and that, as the race becomes more 
refined, and the machinery for transmitting thought is swiftly per- 
fected, the more evident will it be, with every generation, that this 
is the power above nations and ages ; the power behind thrones ; the 
power that ultimately wields all others, and produces or limits the 
changes among states. It is the real lesson of History itself; it is 
the necessary result of our constitution, wherein the spiritual domi- 
nates the material and uses it for its ends ; it is the very axiom of our 
civilization; that Thought transmitted, and Thought appropriated 
governs the World ! 



THE COLLEGE A HIGH CENTRE OF THIS POWEK. T 

Wherever, then. Thought is concentrated and published, there is a 
centre of radiating power ; and the higher the thought, the more 
perfectly expressive of grandest truths, the more intrinsic and su- 
preme is that power. In the cavern or the attic where the scholar 
studies ; in the pulpit where he preaches, or the forum where he de- 
bates ; in the studio where the painter- portrays in colors, or the 
sculptor works out through plastic marble, that seems by turns to 
shiver and grow proud at the touch of his chisel, the thought that has 
possessed him ; in the office from which proceeds the sheet that, en- 
tering many homes, shall circulate through them the convictions of 
the minds that have planned and impressed it ; in even the place of 
casual meeting, where men talk together of themes that are not tran- 
sient, and quicken or instruct each other by the meeting ; in every 
such spot is this power gathered. And he who is wise will disregard 
none of them, for in each one quick principles may be uttered, infolding 
great destinies, and none can tell whether shall prosper, this or that! 
The poor closet of the scholar may become a shrine for reverent 
ages, like the old mill at Oxford where Roger Bacon studied ; and 
the pulpit of the preacher, or the office of the editor, may govern 
more really than presidents or senates. 

But in the College where men are assembled, some with the defi- 
nite purpose of instructing, and others with the responsive purpose 
of gathering knowledge, the power thus exerted becomes fixed and 
compacted ; it gains clearer exhibition, and exerts larger sway. And 
the reason is obvious. The thought there imparted is not given im- 
personally, as it is by the editor ; but is sent directly from one mind 
into others, through living contact. It is not given, only or princi- 
pally, through records ; but it passes on the tones, and takes of the 
pressure of animated speech. It is not given occasionally, as it is 
by the preacher ; but the business of giving, and equally of receiv- 
ing it, is made the business of the life ; the one pursuit, that subor- 
dinates all others. It is not thought, alone, that is thus imparted and 
thus received ; but it is thought exemplified in the characters it has 
formed, and thought illustrated by the energies it has disciplined. 
Finally, the minds thus associated and held together, in intimate, or- 
ganized, and quickening union, are so related to each other, the 
older giving and the younger receiving, that the minds of the former 
are left more free, and the minds of the latter are made more sus- 
ceptible, by their very position. The two are associated from the 
first, constitutionally, as the teacher and the disciple ought usually 
to be. 

It is evident, therefore, the moment we regard it, and before all 
experience, that a College must always be a centre of power ; of 



8 TENDENCY OF COLLEGES TO GKOW. 

that power which regulates, limits, and invigorates all others. 
Through the minds which it assembles in its offices of instruction, not 
their own thought only, but the thought of the Past, the thought of 
the present living world of intelligences, the thought and plan of 
God himself, as traced in rocks, and incorporated in the forms 
and the motions of the earth, and splendidly manifested by the 
witnessing stars, as suggested by literature, or as shown by the 
grand and rhythmic progression of history — all these may be brought, 
through personal interaction, upon the minds of those who are gath- 
ered for learning. And when we gain the Angelic ken, when we 
can count the leagues of ether through which light flies on its pil- 
grimage of ages, we may tell the relations, and measure the breadth, 
of that moral power ! Nay, not even then ; for this surpasses, and 
outspans time, and takes of the vastness of Eternity itself ! 

All this of the College, in its very beginning ; while it has only 
form enough to express its idea, and is but incipiently fulfilling its 
office. But there is obviously a second thought to be connected 
with this, to set more clearly this power before us. 

II. It is that every College, by a law of growth inherent in it, tends 
CONSTANTLY TO BECOME LARGER ; more numerous in its teachers, 
more numerous in its scholars, better equipped with the apparatus 
of instruction, and more competent to give to larger numbers a more 
complete training. 

Every founded institution, especially every one which is founded 
on a principle and not on a tradition, which holds an idea within it, 
and does not simply shelter an interest, shows a tendency to grow ; 
to become developed from a less to a larger, and to grow compact 
and copious with years. If it be reared to consult mere commercial 
or political advantage, this may not be. If it be founded to gratify 
pride, to put the crown upon personal ambition, or even to subserve the 
mere convenience of Society, this Avill not be. But if it be founded 
on a permanent demand of Human Nature itself, and be intrinsically 
adapted to that, this tendency is as certain as that of the date-fruit 
to grow into a palm, and will be as permanent as the fitness of the in- 
stitution to accomplish its ends. And in no case is this exemplified 
more fully than in that of the College. 

It is a fact which has arrested the attention of historians, 
that the great Universities which embellish and enrich the civiliza- 
tion of Europe, commenced with the smallest and humblest begin- 
ings, and advanced very gradually to eminence and wealth. They 
were not established, as hospitals have been, by royal munificence, 
and equipped at the start with all means of instruction. They did 
not grow up, even, from a system of lower and more popular schools ; 



GEOWTH OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY, 9 

fe system which had extended itself, by degrees, until it encompassed 
the nation with its influence, and out of the midst of which shot forth 
at last, as a consummate product, the great University ; opulent 
with a wealth contributed by each section, and administered by 
minds that had been trained for their departments by many years of 
subordinate service. Not such has been their history. But these 
great Universities— like Oxford, for instance — began in the action of 
some single mind, and were gathered, in the outset, around the res- 
idence of some solitary scholar. 

Alfred may have done something, according to the tradition, to 
maintain or enlarge existing schools at Oxford ; though the histori- 
cal authority for this is not much. But if he did, his exertions and 
benefactions were comparatively slight, too slight to make great or 
permanent mark on the records of his reign ; and he only aided 
what already was commenced. Nor was there any system of aux- 
iliary schools, sending forth the pupils whom they had trained to the 
nascent University. But all we certainly know is, that as early as 
the reign of Edward the Confessor, there v;ere schools at Oxford, 
connected probably with conventual establishments ; that these at- 
tracted by degrees to themselves whoever was studious, and desir- 
ous to improve by the discipline of thought ; that other schools were 
founded, as the numbers in attendance became gradually larger ; that 
neajly a thousand years ago, University College is said to have been 
founded ; then Merton, Exeter, Oriel, Queen's College, New Col- 
lege, All-Souls, Magdalen, and one after another the long catalogue 
of the remainder ; each century producing its series of three or four ; 
each century adding to the libraries, the galleries, the pleasure grounds, 
the chapels ; till the whole immense structure, as now instituted and 
existing, erects itself before us, with its many departments, its many 
and eminent preparatory schools, its mighty mass of apparatus and 
equipment, its immense, unreckoned, and still widening influences, 
which no arithmetic can compute, and no eloquence describe. The 
whole institution is the growth of ages. Time has matured it ; bene- 
factions have nourished it ; revolution has shaken it, but only to fix 
its hold more firmly on the national mind. The names of multitudes, 
eminent in English history, rustle above it as its majestic and musical 
coronal. The acts and lives of illustrious men have been its fruits. 
It, at this moment, anticipates a Future, more prolonged than its Past, 
and far more splendid ; and the elements of civilized society in 
England will hardly outlast it. And yet it sprang from a seed so 
slight, that the acorn which first involved the timbers of the ponder- 
taus battle-ship that now thunders with its cannon against fortresses 
or fleets, is not Ei>.ore inextricably lost in the Past, 



10 OS&WTH OF UNITEBSITY OF PARIS. 

The same thing is true, to a great extent ceFt:inly,of ths Vj^i"- 
varsity of Paris. Before the close of the eighth century^tbe Irish or 
Scotch Alcuin was called by Charlemagne to preside over that infant 
Seminary at Paris, called " The School of St. Martin/' which had 
just been established. He has himself set forth, in the pompous 
and fantastic rhetoric of the period, the studies in which he instruct- 
ed his pupils, " To some I administer the honey of the sacred 
writings ; others I try to inebriate with the wine of the ancient clas- 
sics. I begin the nourishment of some with the apples of grammat- 
ical subtlety ; I strive to illuminate many by the arraagemsnt of the 
stars, as from the painted roof of a lofty palace." In other words. 
Grammar, the Latin language, Astronomy, and Theology, were the 
studies then pursued. Afterward, in the tenth century, there came 
into this school a new learning from the East, derived from the Arab 
conquerors of Spain, who already ' had produced more than three 
hundred writers, and founded more than seventy public libraries, in the 
cities of the Andalusian kingdom.' During the twelfth century, 
through the growing celebrity of the then already ancient school, 
Paris began to be known over Europe, by way of eminence, as the 
' city of letters.' Among its students were found many Englishmen, 
and almost all whose names became distinguished among the learned 
of any country. Abelard was one of its famous teachers, and John of 
Salisbury one of bis pupils. About the beginning of the thirteenth 
century, the school began to subsist in full form, as a Royal Incor- 
poration, divided into nations, and presided over by a Rector ;. and 
thenceforth it was more and more patrorsized by the kings. A 
school of medicine was associated with it j and the study of both 
the civil and the canon law was introduced into its routine. The 
Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic, comprising the " Trivium," Music, 
Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy, composing the " Quadrivium" 
— which had been eulogized by the earlier ages as comprising all 
elements of necessary knowledge — were found to require new studies 
added to them, to complete the curriculum of a liberal education. 
The Aristotelian Logic and Metaphysics, as applied to Theology, 
became a recognized and a powerful element in its mental training. 
And so, step by step, through a progress which I can not tarry to 
delineate, was developed that immense and powerful institution, 
lately the most frequented University in the Avorld ; which had, 
a quarter of a century ago, nearly eight thousand scholars in attend- 
ance upon it ; and which reckons among its recent lecturers the 
names of Collard, Cousin, Guizot, Jouffroy, Biot, and Arago, w^ith 
others whom the world has learned to respect. The growth of the 
city of Paris itself, from that small village on the is-land in tbe 



eUCH GROWTH IHKVITABLE. 11 

Seine where Charlemagne had his royal seat, to that tEagnifi-cenfc 
metropolis and emporium which gathers its wealth from every land, 
and gives its standards of taste to the world, has not been m'^re 
steady, has hardly been more historically conspicuous, than that of 
the school which Alcuirs first taught, to the great University which 
a nation now honors. And a iaw of human nature is expressed in 
the fact. 

One principle of knowledge leads always to anoth-er, interior or 
higher. One department of truth communicates with a second, col- 
lateral and its supplement. A library, if sufficient in one age — 
xvhich no one ever was — becomes necessarily inadequate through 
the progress of the succeeding age. No museum of specimens can 
anticipate those which the penetrating science of after times shall 
collect from the earth, or extract from its mines. And no gallery of 
art can either ingather all that which is valuable of the works of other 
ages, or do without that which is subsequently produced. Meantime, 
too, the resoitrces available for such institutions become continually 
larger, as their constituency, if we may style it such, of educated 
minds, becomes wider and more powerful. And so, as the demand 
continues and augments, the supply increases also. Bodley gives 
his library; and Radcliffe . builds library and observatory both. 
Clarendon furnishes printing-presses, and leaves means for building 
rooms for them ; and Dauby opens a botanic garden. One patroa 
founds a professorship of Divinity, and another professorships of 
Geometry and Astronomy ; one donor supplies instruction in Moral 
Philosophy, and another in Ancient History; a king, perhaps, as at 
Oxford, supplies a professor in Modern History, and Modern Lan- 
guages ; a devotee of his profession gives a Lecturer in Anatomy. 
And so liberal minds in every age, discerning a want, are moved to 
supply it. Each generation supplements the work accomplished by 
its predecessor, and does its part to carry that to perfection ; and the 
whole structure rises, like the Cathedral of Cologne, never perhaps 
to be perfectly finished, but majestic in its progress, and all the more 
august and exalting, because combining in its rearing, as it contem- 
plated in its plan, the labors and the gifts of successive ages. 

And all this time, too, while adding thus to its material equipment, 
the institution gathers the invisible wealth — invisible, but essentially 
quickening and invaluable— of illustrious associations ; with the schol- 
ars whom it has trained, with the statesmen, the divines, the poets, 
the philanthropists, the great promoters of science and of art, who 
have gone from it. Their memory becomes its inspiring inheritance. 
It consecrates the buildings where they once trode. It hangs its 
basi-tier of golden iight before every wiadow, aloug every aisle. 



12 SUCH GROWTH PERMANENT. 

where their eyes have rested. It makes the groves to whisper 
their names, to syllable their words, almost to breathe with their spir- 
itual presence. It passes an exhilarating, inspiring influence from 
each age onward, through the ranks that come after ; and exalts 
the present cycle, of acquisition and action, into communion with 
those which History records, and of whose fruits the world is 
taking. 

And nothing, in a peaceful and free civilization, like that of En- 
gland, or of this country, can easily arise to check this progress, or 
to arrest it on this side of absolute continuance. Priestly power 
may come in, where that prevails, as in the Universities of Spain, 
and prohibit its subjects from teaching Philosophy. Despotic au- 
thority may now and then interpose, and take some hall of learning 
for a fortress, and run its peaceful types into bullets. But, where 
freedom prevails, and peace is thus secured — that peace, which Al- 
fred is said to have declared was all he wanted to carry forward 
his schools to growth and greatness — where industry furnishes the 
means of advancement, and enterprise enlarges and liberalizes. 
men's thoughts, there is nothing to hinder the most permanent and 
most noble advancement of such Seminaries. 

Commerce, though sometimes not altogether friendly to them, but 
rather inclined to undervalue and supersede them by more practical 
schools, may be liberalized by them, until she shall pour her affluent 
treasures into their bosom ; and Democracy may be taught to recog- 
nize in them the true, and generous, and necessary nurseries of that 
dignified patriotism, that large philanthropy, and that wise states- 
manship, which are her only safeguards and support. And so the 
mighty and still growing progress tends silently to advance, until the 
description of the sacred poet, transferred to our times, is literally 
realized, and the institution, which was so small at the beginning, 
yet even then a centre of power, stands forth before men, like the 
citadel of Jerusalem before his eye : " as the Tower of David, 
builded for an Armory, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all 
shields of mighty men !" 

III. From such an institution there radiates naturally an influence 

which REALLY AFFECTS ALL CLASSES ; which MAKES EACH ONE MORE 

SECURE AND MORE POWERFUL, confirming its resources and enno- 
bling its life ; even as from the citadel of David, there went a force 
that guarded each home within the city, and made Jerusalem, in all 
its bounds, more peaceful and secure. This is the third point which 
we should consider. 

I have spoken already of the nature of the power thus silently 
distributed. Its universality remains to be considered. It has 



ONLY LIMIT OF THIS INFLUENCE OF COLLEGES. 13 

■Qne limit, and only one. There arise, at distant intervals m His- 
tory, pre-eminent minds, real creators in their departments, that seem 
hardly so much a part of the race as its pre-ordained instructors ; 
sent forth of God to open new tracts of effort and research, and to 
give therein, at the very commencement, the highest attainable exam- 
ples of success. Such was Homer in poetry ; and such in later 
ages were Dante and Shakspeare. Such was Euclid in Geometry. 
Such, Raphael, in painting ; and such his more majestic cotemporary, 
the great master in all the related arts of painting, sculpture, and 
architecture, Michael Angelo. In the works of each of these Mas- 
ters in their departments, not only were old ideas applied with ex- 
traordinary force and in new combinations, but new ideas and laws 
were inaugurated, for after times to accept and employ. Great prim- 
itive and architectonic forces were developed by them, for the in- 
struction of the world. 

And such men neither needed, nor perhaps would have been 
aided by, the discipline of the University. Their own minds were 
Universities, so far as their special art was concerned ; equipped 
with the forces, and imbued with the tendencies, inspired with the 
impulses, and made intuitively to apprehend the truths, which after 
Universities — that are only the collections of leading minds in any 
one time, and not of these master-lights of all time — could only 
learn from them, and partly reproduce. God endowed such rare, su- 
preme, and solitary souls, with a double portion of his own force ; 
the very regium donum of his bestowment. They needed no dis- 
cipline of inferior minds, they needed opportunity and nothing else, 
the tuition of meditation, the invitations of nature, to draw forth 
their powers. And the outward influences often can not be traced 
whereby they became so majestic as they were, and so replenished 
with thought. We can not tell where Euclid studied. We only 
know that he opened the School of Geometry at Alexandria. We 
can not tell through what influence it was that the crabbed stock of 
Italian civilization blossomed out, all at once, into the splendid pic- 
torial genius of the sixteenth century ; nor how it was that the wild 
boy of Stratford, the strolling player of the age of Elizabeth, be- 
came so informed with the essence of History, and was made so 
strangely to encompass in himself all the forces of life, that his 
tragedies remain a possession forever, familiar to the ages, and im- 
perishable as vital air. We can only say that He who made the 
ocean larger than the lake, and the sun than the planet, and the 
planet itself than the satellite which follows it, made these minds 
larger and more capacious than others, and different from them, by 
tlieir very constitution, for purposes whose secret is in His will. It 



14r EKEADTH OF THIS INFLUENCE. 

is His wisdom simply ; and He may exert the same energy again, oj 
he may withhold it, precisely as he will. 

In regard to these minds, then, we can only say, in tracing the in- 
fluences of such a University as I have outlined, that it does not 
interfere with, if it does hot secure, their production and develop- 
ment. On the other hand, through the influence which it circulates 
or creates, it secures the arena most meet for their exhibition, when- 
ever they are sent forth. So far as their creation is dependent on 
forces which man can either quicken or govern, it prepares the way 
for it. And sometimes, when they appear, it will do for them what 
Christ-College, at Cambridge, did for Milton ; it will furnish them 
with knowledges to be interpreted and reconciled by the intuitions 
of their genius, and will put instruments in their "hands, with which 
the splendid spirit within, not hiding itself for solitary thought, 
may go forth armed, for the battle of light against error and 
darkness, for the battles of God against the powers of the world. 
I see no relations in which a University may not be friendly and fos- 
tering to such minds, and help them to realize their kingly mission ; 
and the idea which sometimes has obtained among men, that it hin- 
ders their development, and postpones still further the period of 
their creation, seems to me among the silliest of fantasies. It is 
trying to measure meteors by the laws that govern rivers. 

But it is not for such minds, as I said before, that the University is 
designed. They anticipate and comprehend it, in great measure, 
innately. They stand outside of it, by their inheritance. But for 
the great class of governing minds m any age, for those which act 
with power on their cotemporaries, and by whose action the affairs 
of a nation, in any century, are modified and decided — for these, such 
schools of learning are reared, and to such they are fitted. How 
perfect are their adaptations to enrich and complete these ! By such 
.advancing schools of learning, the political aspirant is educated into 
the statesman ; the student of Theology is made the acromplished 
and comprehensive divine ; the youth, whose tastes and innate ten- 
dencies lead him to letters as his domain, is made the liberal scholar 
and teacher of all good arts; the pupil, who otherwise would have 
been but a sciolist, becomes the exact and scientific savan, familiar 
with the researches of those who have preceded him, and capable 
of transmitting a still enriched knowledge to those who come after; 
the student of art, by the familiarity with its high rules into which 
he is led, and his intercourse with its great and quickening exam- 
ples, is fitted to embellish what otherwise he would have dishonored, 
the culture of his time, and to advance that culture to still higher 
points ; the lawyer, instead of a mere tricky manager of small affairs, 



<ITHE2E SCHOOLS HELVED BY COLLEGES, 15 

m made a student of precedents and laws, of history and of ethics, of 
4he whole dirine economy in fact, and the laws of human nature, 
and the development of the race; the physician is taught in the 
mysteries of wisdom incarnated in our fearful and wonderful frame, 
and finds botany, chemistry, mineralogy, climatology, all his auxil- 
iaries ; and the astronomer is enabled not only to count the visible 
stars, and interpret their motions, as the ancients could not, not only 
to point his revealing tube to the still profounder deeps above him, 
and bring to view the other worlds which for ages had only been 
seen by the angels, but even to go out beyond any telescope, on the 
airy march of an analysis still more perspicacious and exact, and pre- 
figure the forms, and determine the masses, and even lay down the 
orbits and the paths of those remote worlds whose existence and motion 
are only inferred from the necessity of thena to keep our whirling 
globe in equipoise. No branch of useful knowledge is pursued in 
any age, no department of laudable and beneficent action is opened 
or is prosecuted, in which the influence of sBch a seat of learning 
must not be benignant. It tends to make the artisan an artist, the 
mechanic an architect, the sailor a navigator ; as well as to make 
the politician a statesman, the newsman a historian, and the rhymer 
a poet. It tends to enrich and ennoble the influence that pervades 
every court-room, that emanates from each press, that radiates, with a 
power from God upon it, around every pulpit. It tends, in a word, 
to make the State, in all its reach, more affluent and secure, and every 
home in it more enlightened and more free. 

The lesser Seminaries, especially Common Schools, are sometimes 
conceived, by uninformed minds, as endangered, or at least over-shad- 
4swed and obscured, by such founded Colleges, which are growing to 
be llnirersities. But the fact is, on the other hand, that these lesser 
schools sprang from the higher at the outset, as thrifty shrubs s*re 
boru of trees, taking life from their roots ; and that they ever since 
have flourished best, I might almost say only, in connection with them. 
Popular education, without such fixed and elevated centres, would be 
a mere nebulous mist of sciolism, enlightening nobody. Popular ed- 
ucation, when it emanates from such centres, such positive orbs of 
concentrated learning, becomes a grandly illuminating presence, in 
every hamlet and every district; its luminous waves propelled coji- 
tinually from unfailing sources, and bearing quickening power every- 
where. And there is not a school or a Ij'ceum, to-day, in any town- 
ship of our whole land, that would not be richer, more exalting and 
'inspiring in its contact with the minds assembled by it, if that Uni- 
«?ersity which is planted in this city* had attained already the full 

* T&is disccurse was first delivered at Providence, E. 1. 



16 RELATIONS OF THIS INFLUENCE TO CHKISTIANITI. 

development which it surely will gain, with the progress of the ages. ; 
if every art, and every literature, all forms and powders of humaa 
knowledge, which the race has thus far developed and secured, 
were now at home iii it. Not this State only, but every college 
afid every academy, every press and every lecture-room, every pulpit 
and every forum, every district and every home» within the compass 
of our confederacy — down to the Del Norte^ beyond the snowy 
cones of Oregon — would feel the pressure, and be the richer for it,. . 
of one such replete and magnificent University. 

In a word, the influence which is lodged in the College, and which 
circulates from it, is not only vital, as I said, at the outset, but it is 
in its nature a universal influence ; especially in a country free like 
ours, where the classes of society intermix all the time, and the dif- 
ferent ranks change place three times in every century ; and wheye 
every force asserts itself without pause. In such a country,, the 
influence of the University must circulate swiftly, and permeate the 
whole. No barrier of fixed rank interrupts or restrains it. No> 
distinction of caste confines it to a few. It takes all human rela- 
tionships for its media, is more mobile than the atmosphere, pen- 
etrant and pervading as life itself. As the citadel guards the wh&ie 
population in the midst of which it stands, so does such an institution 
pervade with its influence, and shelter by its power,, the whole 
community in the midst of which it is reared. It comes more and 
more to be recognized by that, in its peaceful halls and modest chap^ 
els, as being to it like the very ' tower of David, buiided for an Ar- 
mory ,-' where every art hath hung its shield, and where the wise and 
mighty men who have successively assisted or defended the State» 
have learned their skill, and left their trophies \ 

IV. It only remains that I notice, for the fourth thing connected 
with such an institution of learning, that it is a power which,, above 
all others, is harmonious with Christianity, and adapted to re 
USED BY it. It may be, more fitly than any other, the citadel of its 
strength, and the armory of its weapons. 

When I speak of Christianity I mean of course that Protestant 
Christianity which takes Christ for its head, the Scriptures for its 
law, and Preaching for its means, while relying on the influence of 
the Spirit of God to insure to this success. A Religion of Sacraments 
that seeks to renew men and fit them for salvation by a physical, on 
at least a psychological, influx, transmitted from one generation to an- 
other, through appointed conduits, and by manual contacts, will hardly 
rely on Schools or Universities as its chief auxiliaries. It may build 
such for ornaments to the civilization it generates ; or try to use them, 
within certain limits, as its foci and fortresses., and their studies as its 



A PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY NEEDS COLLEGES. 17 

weapons. But it will not incite them to, it will not allow to them, 
spontaneous growth, until they include all departments of thought, 
and it can only tolerate them so long as they yield to the control of 
its officers, and send out their students as its trained devotees. And 
even then, a Religion like that must naturally rely, as historically it 
has relied, on means outside of and diverse from these, for its chief 
advances ; on ceremonies and shows, on priestly orders and mo- 
nastic establishments, on royal alliances and the arts of diplomacyi 
on political intrigue and the conquests of vi^ar. 

But a Protestant Christianity, such as I have described, takes 
such seats of learning as its natural means, and its foremost allies. 
Its total relation to them is cordial ; and it becomes mightiest when 
allied with them in most intimate union. They are necessary to it, 
for its own illustration and defense; for its logical maintenance. 
For such a Christianity is itself, by profession, a system of truth ; 
of that moral truth, of those spiritual verities, which transcend all 
others, and which yet are organically connected with them. It is a 
Religion not of theory only, but of actual historical development in 
the world ; of a development as real, as evident, and as really to be 
investigated and verified by research, as that of any empire which 
the earth has held upon it. It is a Religion not committed to tra- 
dition ; not incorporated in rites only ; nor solely intrusted to a 
privileged class ; but one that lives in records and writings access- 
ible to all, and which must be intelligently accepted and interpreted. 
History is involved in it, as really as Prophecy ; it treats of fact, as 
well as of doctrine ; it develops a philosophy of human nature, 
while revealing the mystery of the Divine existence ; and it claims 
to be in harmony with, though not directly to anticipate and unfold, 
the structure and laws of the physical universe, while declaring to 
us those realms of spiritual life and activity, above the stars, which 
no eye hath seen. 

Such a Religion, therefore, if true, which we assume it to be, is in 
Jiarmony with all truth. It will derive illustration from every other 
department of truth ; and will take new supremacy over men's 
thoughts, and attract more fully their loving faith, as its complete and 
divine majesty is more amply set forth by collateral studies. Such 
a Religion has nothing to fear, but every thing to hope, from every 
good art, from every fruitful and large research. The science of 
the earth, when fully disclosed, will only confirm it. The science 
of the stars will only illustrate it. The science of the mind will 
show the wants it comes to meet, and exhibit more fully its aptitudes 
for this. The science of History will build for it, by degrees, as 
more largely pursued, a magnificent platform, to which all vanished 

VOL. I. NO. VI. — 36 



18 NEEDS THEM FOR ITS ADVANCEMENT. 

ages and all decayed nations shall contribute their part, and from 
which shall be shown, in fullest manifestation, the harmony of the 
Christian records with all the action of man, and the fitness of the 
Christian principles to all the needs of his nature. 

There are some truths, of course, so remote from Christianity, 
by natural position, that they can contribute but little to it. But 
there is no truth with which it can ever corae into conflict ; and 
none which will not stand to it at last, however subordinate, in a 
relation of assistance, illustration, or defense ; an outbuilding, if not 
a tower or a column, to its immense and imperial palace. Christi- 
anity, therefore, from its very constitution, must instinctively cherish 
all seats of sound learning. It would be unmindful of its nature and' 
its dignity-, untrue to itself, if it did not this. 

It must cherish them, too, and avail itself of them, as allies in its 
advance to the conquest of the earth. They are necessary to ii, for 
its general puhlication ; and every power which they produce may 
become its auxiliary. For Christianity, being a moral power, advan- 
ces by moral, and not by physical means. It everywhere takes the 
pulpit for the fulcrum of its outward operation. It relies on the elo- 
quence that has faith at the heart of it, for its mastery over men. And, 
oubordinately to this, it uses most freely the press and its enginery ; 
and seeks to reach men through the eloquence, silent, but real as 
the other, which is made to pulsate through all forms of literature. 

Whatever, then, enriches the thoughts of men, or refines and ex- 
alts these, or puts a higher energy upon them, while leaving the 
principle of faith undisturbed, makes them just so much better min- 
isters of Christianity ; the more appropriate and powerful agents, in 
achieving its advance. The splendid genius of the Apostle to the 
Gentiles, cxdtivated by Greek training, ministered to by all the as- 
sociations that dignified Tarsus, and disciplined afterward by the 
masculine regimen of the Pharisean Schools, to whom travel was a 
teacher, and many cities the halls of his University, until he was 
fitted to be equally at home and equally effective when remonstrat- 
ing at Jerusalem and when reasoning at Athens, when addressing 
Agrippa or pleading before Felix, and when speaking to the woman 
at the water-side at Philippi — this is the great example of the fact, 
from the primitive time, for all after ages. And every illustrious 
champion of the truth, who has preached Paul's doctrine, with his 
spirit reproduced, till the nations paused at his feet to hear it, and 
listening centuries clasped hands around his pvdpit, has shown the 
same. It was out of the Universities — even out of those which 
Rome had cramped and chained by her rules — that the Reformation 
sprang, really though indirectly, both in England and in Germany, 



NEEDS THEM FOE ITS TRIUMPH. 19; 

And that Reformed Religion, which there had its Seminaries, andi 
which now, by God's blessing, hath been handed on to us, has e\'cr since 
found in such its shelter, and drawn from them its noblest champions. 
It can not advance itself by diplomacy, or by war. New fields may 
thus be opened to it ; but men's minds or hearts can not thus be 
changed. It can not advance itself by any purchase, of money, or any 
terrors, of power. It must convince men, and so convert them. And 
whatever helps one mind toward fitness to convince and inwardly to 
move others, v/hile not overthrowing its principle of Faith, is favor- 
able to Christianity. Each science, which strengthens and disci- 
plines the mind ; each art, which adorns it; each knowledge, which 
opens to it the mysteries of life ; each form of practice, which 
helps it to speak well ; each communion with the Past, which brings 
the inspiring force of that to pervade and exalt it, and enables it 
to touch other minds more directly with electrifying energy ; all 
that which elevates or accumulates its force, and makes it more 
manly, more copious, and more free — all, girds and equips its 
disciple for his work, and hastens the era of the triumph of the 
truth. 

The College, therefore, as it grows to be a University, remains at 
each step tho fit, and natural, and necessary ally of a Protestant 
Christianity. It is a centre of power ; of power that grows greater 
as the ages advance ; of power that affects society on all sides ; of 
precisely the power which Christianity requires. Religion, as 
molding and interpenetrating such Colleges, will exalt and confirm 
them ; quickening and uniting their separate studies by its earnest 
spirit ; superadding to all others the highest of all, even the study 
of itself; and more and more making prominent within them the 
grand idea of every University, which is not the mere accumulation 
of knowledges for the furnishing of the mind, but the training of that 
mind, of every mind embraced within it, to the most athletic and 
symmetrical development ; a development that shall be itself a chief 
good, and shall multiply others ; to which study shall be sweet, and 
utterance easy, and all effort a pleasure. 

And, at the same time, while benefiting such Seminaries, Christi- 
anity will use them, with the grandest effect, for its own illustration, 
for the vital propagation of it over the earth. Every art which 
ihey cherish shall be its ally. Every soul which they enrich 
with knowledge, and which at the same time is penetrated with 
faith, shall be its glorious minister to men. Every tongue or pen 
which they set free in the liberty of large thought, shall scatter its 
words of life and healing, as the star distributes its radiant light. 
And on the influence of refinement and peace, of social order, polit- 



20 REASON FOE FOUNDING COLLEGES. 

ical improvement, ameliorated manners, and general civilization, 
which emanates from such centres, Christianity shall be borne, 
as the Lord was on the clouds that infolded him over Tabor ; not 
necessary to his support, but making his meet and resplendent pavil- 
ion ; not celestial in their nature, yet mirroring his glory ! 

Not dark or doubtful is the relation sustained by such Colleges to 
Christianity. It finds in every one of them, and more and more as 
they more fully complete the office foreshadowed in their structure — 
it finds in every one of them, which is a seminary of truth and not 
of error, it will do so through all the centuries — and this is one 
illustrious proof of its fitness to the world in which these stand as 
organizing powers, and in which they become continually mightier as 
civilization advances — it finds in each one of them an institution which 
is to it as the very Citadel to Jerusalem ; ' the tower of David, 
builded for an armory.' The past and the present combine to de- 
clare this. The very structure of Christianity is vocal with its 
proofs. The College is its magazine, its depot of troops, its arsenal 
and its fortress, combined in one ! 

" A looming bastion fi-inged -with fire ;" 

but fire only hurtless and benign ! 

Therefore it is, that we seek to found and build up such perma- 
nent Colleges. We seek to found them, where now they are not ; 
for every such self-developing institution bears the baptism of the 
influence by which it was commenced, and with which in its earli- 
est years it was identified, far onward in its history. If not at first 
in harmony with Christianity — if established, even, in a definite and 
spirited antagonism to that — it will yet, by the tendencies involved 
in its structure, drift more and more into harmony with that, and will 
finally be compelled to accept and involve it, like the celebrated Uni- 
versity established by Jefferson, to save itself from destruction. 
But if it include Christianity at the outset, and be framed to express 
that, then will that probably reign in and inspire it, with a power 
more apparent at some times than at others, but real all the time, 
even unto the end ! It is not so much the provisions of charters, en- 
forced by courts, that will secure this. The seJf-et^olving life of the 
College, itself, in the long run insures the result. 

And, as thus vitally and permanently associated with such centres 
of power, Christianity will have a hold on our country that can not 
be paralleled, and that 7iever can be shaken. You might as well 
shake the mountain from its base, which is bolted by columns and 
shafts of granite to the centre of the earth ! Nor can limits be set 
to the diffusion of its influence. All literature at last will come to 



EXAMPLE OF THE FATHERS^ 21 

speak it. Debates will bear the stamp of it. The Educated Mind 
of the Cou7itry will be filled with it ; and that in the end controls the 
rest. And this power will never grow less with time. For Colleges, 
as I said, tend always to increase and ascend to Universities ; re- 
positories that is, and seminaries as well, of all human knowledge , 
and their power becomes greater as the centuries advance. The 
influence, then, which forms them at the beginning, and which there- 
after permeates them, will extend with their growth, and be energized 
continually by their accumulating strength. It never ivill fail, so 
long as Colleges keep pace with civilization. It never will fail, so 
long as they grow, with an annulus of buildings developing every 
century, and an assembly of students growing larger every year I 

Here, then, is the centre, looking down the long future, of the 
missionary operations that shall renovate our country ! I look upon 
other forms of eflbrt, for the one great end ; and though each one is 
needful in its place, they seem superficial and necessarily fugitive, 
in comparison of this. They are so, altogether, except as continu- 
ally associated with this. The tracts are arrows, the treatises 
spears, the missionaries soldiers, going forth on great errands. But 
the tower and the armory, from which they all issue, and in which 
tliey are forged or are trained for their mission — it is the College, 
founded by liberal and large-hearted men, and afterward enlarged 
by those who succeed them. It outlasts treatises. It outlives gen- 
erations. With undisturbed and still growing life, it watches tho 
passage and change of governments. With even pulse, it counts the 
centuries. And to the end it still survives, a centre still of circulat- 
ing force, a nursery still of ministering minds. 

I honor, then, the magnificent Christian endeavor which seeks to 
plant these throughout the country ; to belt the prairie, and fringe the 
lake with them ; to make them almost keep pace with the pioneer, and 
anticipate the immigrant, on their swift march across the continent, to 
the shores of the Pacific. I honor this effort, and delight to take 
part in it. If now it were new, the entering upon it would mark a 
new era in Christian advance, and show a higher wisdom gained. 
But it is not new. The great examples of the Fathers are with us ; 
of those who founded Harvard, in the midst of their poverty ; of those 
who planned Yale, before the hills that shelter and overshadow it 
had missed the Indian ; of those who reared Dartmouth to teach 
the Indian ! We have some kindling memories with us ; of those 
perhaps of our own blood, whose life has gone to settle the base, 
and cement the prosperity, of more recent institutions, that shall still 
bear their impress and perpetuate their memory, till the AU6gha« 
nies melt, and the continent departs ! We have history on our side ; . 



Z2S THE FUTURE RKQUIRE6 SDCH COLLEGES. 

and the laws of human nature ; and all the tendencies of our civili- 
zation ; and God himself, who hath blessed so often these Colleges 
with His presence, inspiring their studies by his revealed love, and 
making them luminous, above all other centres of intercourse, with a 
glory than which the Shekinah was hardly brighter. Our times pre- 
eminently demand such effort. Their rushing currents bear away 
minor influences, as tumultuous floods bear the foliage of autumn de- 
posited upon them. We must build solid bulwarks of influence amid 
the.ra, and anchor these to the rocks, and make them at once imper- 
vious and impregnable, in order to check or wisely guide our eager 
age. The future ages, with their promises of peace, and their long 
eras of opulence, invite us to lay the foundations now, that then shall 
be built upon, and magnificently enlarged. The World itself, which 
waits for this country to act upon it with the mightiest force of a 
Christian intelligence diffused throughout it, and a grand Christian 
manhood realized by its leaders — the World, which is to so great an 
extent to be quickened by our outreaching life, and borne upward to its 
redemption by our endeavors — inspires to this work. The waiting 
lands, the coming centuries, become suppliants for it. And in the ages' 
that are surely to come, foretold by prophecy, foreseen by faith, and- 
realized already to the thought of the Most High, — when not this 
Western World alone, but every land and every sea, shall be at peace 
through liberty and truth ; when every empire shall have Christ for 
its master, and every art be a minister for Him ; when literature 
throughout shall be quickened by his Spirit, and all human souls bo 
the shrines of his presence ; when states shall be sanctuaries, and 
sciences psalms, and all human governments the allies of the Church — 
in that great age of Christian glory still unfolding and earth ascend- 
ing to sympathy with heaven, it shall be seen that no other effort 
hath been more important, none other hath touched more really or 
deeply the sources of true progress, none other hath given more 
largely to the result, or been a more noble memorial of its workmen, 
than that which reared the Christian College, to ennoble each dis- 
trict, to inspire every state, and to stand in every community which 
it blesses, " as the tower of David, builded for an Armory, whereon 
there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men !" 

The age which sets on these the crown, of perfect civilization and 
millennial purity, shall still preserve and not destroy them ; and the 
great University of the heavens themselves, with their nobler teach- 
ers and their vaster science, their ages of study, and their Vision of 
truth, shall only carry forward, in perpetual ascension, the influence 
and the progress here commenced ! God make us faithful to these 
Seminaries now ; and make us welcome to that hereafter ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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